Google Chrome OS: An new OS for the 21st century?

I'm sure that everyone has heard of the Google Chrome OS, Google's foray into creating an operating system running on Linux where everything is centered around the browser especially Google Chrome. Well, the Google Chrome OS has already been reviewed, with source code available. Engadget has the story. Apparently, the Google Chrome OS is much different than regular operating systems, it has been designed in the beginning for simplicity, security and ease of use.

Google Chrome OS is not meant to totally replace existing OSes like Windows, MacOS or Linux. In my opinion, it is meant for totally web-based computing. There are certain things where a native application is much faster and you can do more than with a web-based application. However, with AJAX and JavaScript, the performance of web-based applications is nearing that of native applications, which makes the game change. But it reminds me now of how the computer will become just like a dumb terminal in the 1960s and 1970s before the PC era. All you need to do is just boot up and everything is on the web, just like before on the mainframe server. Now that everything is going to the cloud, what does this leave for the native client?

Will the PC return back to a dumb terminal? Will rich native clients be replaced with web-based applications running in a browser. Will a browser-based OS make the computer more secure so therefore there isn't any loopholes to have viruses running on the native system exploiting ports from native applications like Outlook and the OS?

What do you think?

Google Chrome

I'm trying out the new Google Chrome browser that Google has created. You may ask yourself why do we need another browser? Google created this video just to answer that question.



According to this video, Google has redesigned the browser to take advantage of the media, the richness and the speed that users require for accessing the internet, as well as security and personalization. Do we need another browser? Well, before we used to have Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer. We now have Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Apple's Safari, and now Google Chrome. It always doesn't hurt to have more competitors, it can only help consumers. And it seems that Google Chrome is much faster in loading pages than the other browsers I've been using.

Google Chrome is open source and can be downloaded here. There's also an interesting comic book about Google Chrome as well. As with all new software, Google Chrome has not escaped bugs, there are some early security vulnerabilities as indicated in PC World magazine.

In my opinion, what will make Google Chrome a success is its openness to developers wanting to write plugins for this browser. I see many developers and techies flaunting to try new things, but what about the average joe user? They are already happy and know how to use Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, what will be the compelling reason for them to change? And I don't know if Google Chrome will support ActiveX because many web sites use ActiveX plugins like Microsoft's download sites and Windows Update. The only time I use Internet Explorer is to have to use Windows Update to check my computer for the latest updates since it won't work with Firefox.

What do people think? Are people using the Google Chrome browser, what are your experiences with it? Is it good that Google is creating another browser, are they dominating the web with their presence, is this part of the Google empire?

On Technorati: Google Chrome